Rest Is Resistance
A Manifesto
Tricia Hersey—aka “The Nap Bishop”—is here to tell us to rest, and I am ready to listen. This book is less guide or manual than incantation, mantra, gospel. Hersey’s vision of rest emerges out of a practice of Black liberation, including Afrofuturism, decolonialism, womanism, and anti-capitalism. In her telling, a nap isn’t merely to catch up on sleep but a divine right, a protest, an act of liberating onesself from oppressive systems. She explicitly rejects productivity culture, and refuses to diagnose rest as a tool for hustling. Rather, she sees rest as the rejection of capitalism’s impulse to grind us into the ground, and as the restoration of our rightful freedom. Her message is extremely simple, but perhaps that’s why we most need to heed it.